Roger Ebert Reviews

Early in “The Whale,” the new film directed by Darren Aronofsky from a script by Samuel D. Hunter (adapting his stage play), Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who voluntarily looks after her friend Charlie (Brendan Frasier) notes that Charlie, who’s having an episode that convulses the entirety of his 600-pound body, is showing a blood […]

It’s that time of year again! We’ve already run pieces from Venice and Telluride, and our crew heads to Toronto this week for the Festival of Festivals, the world-famous Toronto International Film Festival. Almost back to its pre-pandemic form, this year’s fest boasts some of the most impressive world premieres the annual event has ever

Two political documentaries that recently premiered at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival were inadvertent thematic companions of sorts, charting the US’s involvement in two different wars from varying viewpoints. First, there’s the soul-piercing “Retrograde” by the fearless documentarian Matthew Heineman, who knows a thing or two about being on the front lines, following an unfolding

Once more I am delighted and honored to be attending the Venice Film Festival, to participate in a panel discussing the always innovative (in a sense by definition) films backed by the Biennale College, which I’ll be writing about in my final installment. My viewing schedule is a little shorter than it’s been in previous

Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall) is the “First Lady” of Wander to Greater Paths, an Atlanta Southern Baptist megachurch run by her husband, Lee-Curtis (Sterling K. Brown). They are 25,000 parishioners strong—or rather, they were 25,000 parishioners strong. When writer/director Adamma Ebo’s film “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” opens, they are down to five of their former

“Revenge is like a river,” a woman says in voiceover at the beginning of the movie. Her next words give more detail to the simile, but it’s not until the very end of this unsettling, absorbing thriller that her thought is completed, so to speak—over a very convincing visual depiction. Written and directed by Congolese filmmaker

In Henry James’ 1897 novel What Maisie Knew, the child Maisie is an innocent bystander and victim of the dissolution of her narcissistic parents’ marriage. What makes What Maisie Knew a “modernist” novel (before Modernism as a literary concept came along), is its point of view. Told only from Maisie’s perspective, we experience her six-year-old

The British post-war thriller “Burial” has all of the right elements to be a great time-waster. Set in West Poland just after World War II, writer/director Ben Parker’s period piece follows a troop of Russian soldiers as they try, despite their personal reservations, to follow orders and deliver Hitler’s corpse to Stalin in Moscow. Along

For much of its overlong running time, “Waiting for Bojangles” depicts mental illness as an adorable personality quirk, a source of good-time party vibes, even a glamorous quality. Then, once this frothy French romance evolves into a more serious drama, it turns turgid, causing a jarring tonal shift. And yet, in the midst of all

When it comes to satire, two basic approaches can be used—one can go big and broad, ensuring that everyone gets the joke, or one can do it with such subtlety that some not paying attention might mistakenly assume the work is endorsing the very things it’s making fun of. Either one is perfectly valid and